I’m not gonna lie; I live in a pretty closed bubble when it comes to politics. Before this semester, I didn’t really pay attention to the news. When I logged onto social media, the only kind of news I got was about rescued dogs and celebrities. This semester, since I’m taking Ethics and Gender and Pop Culture, it’s been impossible to stay away from the news and the stories of today’s world, and I don’t want to stay away. Hell, I downloaded Twitter just so I can stay up to date with news (Laura laughs at me for this), but someone in my Gender class suggested that it’s a really good place to get news because most of the top stories are fact-checked and are confirmed by many reliable sources. I’ve taken to reading theSkimm, so I get a snippet of what’s been happening each day in my mailbox. I don’t want to not know what’s happening in the world anymore, especially after I learned about Net Neutrality months too late. Ever since Melina and I were the “peer experts” for the Internet Age in our Gender class, Net Neutrality’s been on my mind. I wondered why something so important was never brought up in our Ethics class, especially since the banishment of Net Neutrality is set to occur on April 24th, but I later saw that we were going to be speaking about it this week. I’m excited to hear about some of my classmates POVs, particularly those of more conservative leanings. In my Gender class, the students are overwhelmingly (and unsurprisingly, given the topics we discuss in this class) left-leaning, and everyone wanted Net Neutrality. Given what we know, Net Neutrality is essentially the idea that ISPs (and there are only like, 5 major ISPs) cannot limit or block (or speed up) content that they agree and disagree with. Basically, it allows for the Internet to be free with government regulation. Big companies that take up a lot of broadband, like Netflix, Facebook, and Google, as well as start-ups, and the general public are huge advocates for Net Neutrality. On the other side, we have Trump’s new FCC, the ISPs (AT&T, Verizon, Comcast), and basically any person who agrees with all of the president’s opinions. The cases against Net Neutrality are pretty unconvincing. In the Being Libertarian article, the writer slapped down the “400 pages of new regulations” put in place by the FCC for Net Neutrality but didn’t even bother saying what these pages contained. It felt like some sort of ploy to get people to be scared that it seems so heavily regulated but didn’t even talk about what any of those pages said. At the end of the article I was kind of like, “Ok, so … are they going to talk about their argument against Net Neutrality now?” And I get it, libertarians basically don’t like government regulation, so I guess if the Internet is regulated by the government, it’s bad, right? This is bold, but I’m pretty sure if these same regulations were somehow put into someone else’s hands (or maybe many hands, to make it seem less like being controlled by a single entity), they would no longer have a problem with it. Or maybe if the FCC was actually chosen by the people so they represented the people they are making decisions for, there would be less problem because it’d feel more democratic. But I digress, since the people on the board are selected by the president and confirmed by our red senate. I guess those people were elected officials, but why can’t we also elect representatives for the FCC? Anyway, moving on from that, if it isn’t obvious, I am a proponent for Net Neutrality. Sure, it’s probably not perfect, and I haven’t read the 400 pages of regulation set in place, but it sure beats the idea of letting ISPs run wild and block any websites they want from showing their content to its users, particularly when the ISP map looks like this (with green indicating access to 1 ISP and blue indicating access to 2+): Yeah, so what are we supposed to do if we can’t access our favorite sites? Switch to an ISP that likes them? Ha. Well I guess you better hope that you actually live in an area that lets you do that. The Internet, though provided by these few ISPs, is a public service and fair access should be a basic right. We should be allowed to view whatever we want. I want to get both sides of a news story before forming my own opinion. I don’t want to only know the left-leaning side because I have to pay in order to learn about both sides. I don’t want to be controlled by the ISP I’m forced to have because the competition between them is so abysmal. I think about John Oliver’s Net Neutrality segment and I worry extensively about living in an age where the Internet could no longer promote movements that were started and propagated through the Internet, like BLM and LGBTQ communities. So yeah, I want my Internet to be regulated by the government (“the biggest, most powerful monopoly in the world!!!”) if that’s what it takes to keep these other ISPs (read: other monopolies, just privately-owned) from controlling what I can and cannot see.
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From what I understand, Corporate Personhood is pretty bogus. It essentially states that a corporation is entitled to certain (but not all) natural rights that humans are typically attributed, such as the ability to sue and be sued, endorse political candidates (allowing them to funnel millions of dollars into their campaigns), and the right to religious freedom. However, you cannot incarcerate a corporation because it’s not really a person. Like Jon Stewart joked, one way to show a corporation isn’t a human is through its “inability to love”. The ramifications of granting corporations these rights makes it seem like corporations are entities that can do whatever they want without consequence. This is an oversimplification, but a corporation really can’t be arrested; its CEOs and board members can, and the company could go bankrupt, but the corporation itself is not damaged, physically, because it is an entity and not a corporeal being.
After reading into the Muslim Registry case study, I believe tech workers and companies are right to pledge not to actively work on building an immigration database. While it is based in moral and ethical views, I don’t see how having something like this, which literally profiles and makes those targeted individuals feel unsafe, can sit well with anyone. In the grand scheme of things, it’s hard to justify having a database like this when it probably would not even help in the long run. Like with the unsuccessfulness of the NSA and its government surveillance, I don’t see having a registration of US citizens and immigrants of Islamic decent/religious practice would help anything but stoke the raging fire of animosity and stigma against Muslims already burning. Sure, proponents of having a registry would say that they think it makes them feel safer and will justify its existence with this opinion. However, if the tables were turned, they would feel outraged. To have a database based on profiling a person because of their race or religion is a violation of human privacy. To turn that data over to the government and use it to “weed out” the wrongdoers or illegal immigrants feels unfair for those who are just trying to live their life and mind their own business. I think that companies do need to make business decisions with morality and ethics in mind. To make decisions without it could be severely detrimental to the general public, as well as the company itself. I believe it’s very important to consider the triple bottom line of “people, planet, and revenue” when considering business decisions and how to move forward. We cannot make decisions that affect the planet and its residents without first thinking about the ramifications it can have. To put it short, it would be irresponsible to all parties involved. A company also cannot make immoral decisions without hearing back from public outcry and risking a significant flop in how the company is received. Since companies are often caterers to its consumers (because they are the ones who are providing them with the money), they must take into consideration what they may think and how they may react before making decisions. Big data is such a hot topic right now. I enjoy learning about it almost as much as I am creeped out by it! There are so many cool things you can learn by looking and using big data, but there are also a lot of harmful things you can do, as well (but it could also be unintentional, too). I found it really interesting that people who knew their privacy had been invaded (their information was already being manipulated and used in some way) didn't care enough to pay even $1 to keep their information safeguarded, while people who thought their information was protected would be willing to pay. As one person said, people were "resigned" to the fact that their information was out there and being used, and there isn't much to be done about it. Me, personally, I don't really care that they know my googling habits. This somehow feels like a less serious issue than government surveillance, even though there's probably a lot of overlap. However, in the advertisement industry specifically, I don't care that they target ads towards me, mostly because I am not usually swayed by ads (unless they're for cool phone games because I'm always looking for new phone games). In some ways, it does feel a little invasive, and it's sort of creepy how quickly things will pop up. Just today I had some things remaining in my cart for F21, and I opened a Facebook tab and lo and behold, there were the sandals I was just looking at. This actually reminds me of when this happened to me and Erin last year (hopefully Erin doesn't mind that I screenshotted our text convo): She had sent me a link to the Bowflex trying to explain what it is, and two hours later while she was on instagram, she had an ad. Two minutes later, I opened instagram, and I also had the same ad! We laughed about it then and I still think it's pretty funny, but that just goes to show how pervasive this issue really is.
As for a company's responsibilities regarding this information, I do think that they really need to keep it private and use it for their own use. I find some comfort when I see on the Google Ads page that they do not distribute my personal information to anyone else, but then again, maybe the Terms and Conditions said they had the right to lie to me, so who even knows. However, by using their product, I think I sort of give up some of my rights to perfect privacy. I hope that they don't use it for anything bad, but if it's benign like targeted ads, I don't really mind. I don't really want to re-delve into the issue of government surveillance and our personal information on our phones and computers, so I'll stop there. On another note, I will be the first to admit that I actively use the AdBlockPlus Google Chrome extension. I dislike the multitudes of ads, and I like that it blocks ads while I watch shows on Hulu (mind you, I pay for Hulu, so I don't see why I need to further generate revenue for them via their ads). That being said, in a general sense, I do not think that online advertising is typically invasive or intolerable. I deal with the ads I see on Facebook (but do get annoyed when they added the feature that allows ads to play mid-video to force to you to watch them while I'm right in the middle of the cute puppy video I was watching), and I typically don't mind seeing them, so long as they do not pop up and block the screen I'm looking at. That's when I find them a little too invasive. However, if a site says "PSSST we noticed you're using an AdBlocker" and politely ask me to turn it off, I comply. I don't care if they want me to turn it off so long as I can still enjoy the content of what I'm looking at, and if giving them revenue by "looking" at ads is going to keep their business up and running, I'll happily contribute because it has no effect on me. I ignore 90% of the ads I see anyway. As to whether I think it's ethical to use ad blocking tools, I don't think I have an obligation to "pay" for a site that is free, even if I am using their services. If they wanted to force me to pay, then they shouldn't offer their services up for free. As one of the articles had also mentioned, "It's not unethical to do things because other people don't like them". Though this isn't a universal truth, I think that it applies in this case. |
AuthorJulianna Yee. Archives
March 2018
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